Thanks for all the advice everybody
Moo, I understand how I may have appeared quite naive from my original post but let me assure you I have considered almost every aspect of my career transition for many months now.
The questions I was asking were minor details where I greatly appreciate the advice of any of my predecessors and are simply the difference between me scraping by whilst training and being able to live comfortably.
I greatly appreciate your honesty though, which I have found quite hard to come by when approaching schools over these same issues.
Thanks again